Dark Beauty
by eoraptor
Summary: Following "Knight Watch" and "Light of Day," our heroine finds herself set upon by friends and allies alike. Are they there to pull her back from the edge, or push her forward?


" _Dark Beauty"_

 _By Eoraptor_

 _Batman and related characters, property DC Comics, Kim Possible and related characters, property Walt Disney Animation. Rated T for language and situations._

* * *

She'd run her mouth one too many times about her gothic adventures. And now karma had come back to bite her for it.

She supposed she shouldn't be at all surprised… he'd been threatening to do this for months now. And she certainly talked him up to her few new friends in the old city. He was her bestest friend, her adoptive brother, something beyond even that… They'd had each other's backs since they were five years old after all.

And he'd finally pulled the trigger on his threat to chase her down and make sure she was alright.

He'd been there for her after the big C took her mate. He and his partner were the only two people on Earth who had known what they were to each other.

Well okay, that was now three people; the dark one knew as well, but only after the fact. Her parents and immediate family probably suspected some of it, but she'd never once officially told them she was more or less committed to a wanted felon.

Her best friends had more or less babysat her for a month afterwards. Had kept her level as she tried to restart a normal life. Had been with her as she worked through the tribulations of going into the civilian world after spending more than half her life saving that world.

When she had pulled on her purple tunic again that day of the android attack, and had seen his eyes, so soft and brown; she knew he was torn. She could tell part of him was screaming with elation that they were "getting the band back together;" and that part of him was terrified of what might happen to her without her dark one in her life to balance her perfectionist edge out.

After all, what was a Princess deprived of her Empress?

They still worked together like a well-oiled machine, even after a two year hiatus in which she worked behind a desk while he saved the world with a little help from their friends. It might have been the only thing that kept her going those first few weeks. Once she'd defeated the last hive of rogue Cece cyborgs, she had been so very sorely tempted to hang it up again, confident others could again watch the world so long as her own personal rogues were shut down.

But the comforting familiarity of working with him and his rodent companion was enough to cause her to prefer this life to the alternative back behind that desk. Not that her abs had agreed when she'd started training to get back to where she'd been before her lioness had gotten really sick. There was a big difference between getting in shape at sixteen, and at just shy of thirty…

He'd let her go solo after they caught that last big green alien infiltrator, but he said if he ever got concerned that she was getting depressed, he'd come back for her. She'd rolled her eyes at that, as if he had any say in whether or not she worked solo. He just smiled, and said that was her 'other side' talking, a passphrase between them that said it was her mate speaking through her mouth, and vice versa.

Not that her mate and her BFF spent any amount of time together if they could avoid it.

She was never completely sure if that was jealousy on either of their parts; his being her ex, and her being her current… or if it was because they simply didn't like each other. She did know that they both had made herculean efforts to play nice for her sake.

When she'd gone to Metropolis for a few months, he'd checked in on her regularly, but without too much concern. When she'd got back to their hometown, he'd peppered her with all kinds of questions about the Super people. He asked if the big guy was really as strong as they said… She said yes, of course he was… stronger in fact. But that the blond didn't have anything to be jealous of… since his powers were given to him by a magical god-force, the Super types wouldn't be able to handle them quite the same way.

She didn't say _why_ of course… that was their secret, not hers. But she knew when he was digging for a compliment about his intermittent abilities compared to others. So she gave him that much.

Things changed when she went to the gothic town, however. He suddenly seemed _much_ more concerned. Even before she had landed, he was on the horn with her. She loved that he cared so much… but there were times when his brand of sunshine could get a bit clingy and overbearing.

Apparently, after she'd told him about her tussle with the two women at the hothouse, he'd decided she needed him again.

She wasn't _entirely_ sure he was wrong, but this wasn't like Metropolis. She'd learned things here that were very sensitive. Things that he might worm out of her in his way. His real power was in seeming harmless until he blew things up, after all.

Not that his wife helped matters. She was almost as fearsome as the redhead's own mate had been. Passionate, edgy, ferociously loyal to her friends, with an eye towards fashion… had the redhead known in high school what she learned about herself later in life, it might well have been her she'd dated senior year and beyond, not him.

Sighing to herself, she sat and waited for his flight into GIA terminal 1. Bridges not crossed soon enough, she thought. It had never been that she chose to live in that closed world… it had been that she literally did not realize that was where she was. At a young age, somehow, she had come to associate admiration of beauty with attraction.

So when she saw a pretty boy, she instantly convinced herself that she was attracted to him. It didn't occur to her until she was nearly twenty that if this were actually true, that she should also be attracted to her pretty purple car, and that statue in the Louvre, or the iridescent green beetle in her grandmother's rose garden.

Sighing, she thought back to those days… of trying to make him understand that in this case, the old cliché was true… it was not him, it was quite literally her. And her, and her… oh, and _especially_ her.

Still, one upshot came of things, in those two years between when she broke it off with him and when she and her darker half got together… He had met someone who was more romantically compatible with him than the redhead herself was. Someone who also loved professional wrestling and greasy Mexican food, and most importantly rated a one or so on the K scale instead of her hard six.

And they were celebrating twelve years together now. A strong relationship by any measure.

"Hey!"

She spun, smiling at the familiar sound of his voice, every bit as playful as it had been when his ears stuck out like taxi-cab doors.

' _oh goddess no…'_

He'd brought backup.

And she had her platinum card out. "Girlfriend!"

It wasn't that the heroine was at all opposed to seeing the mocha beauty that was her best female friend forever, but… now was definitely not a good time. Him, she could convince that the things she was doing at night were business, and maybe… MAYBE get him to stop digging after her secrets.

She, on the other hand, could gossip with the best of them; and was used to hearing _all_ of the heroine's secrets. Which was why when he had been content to believe that she and her dragon had merely been rather coy antagonists; she had plugged and plumbed until she confirmed that where there was smoke, there was indeed fire.

And as she tried to figure out just how she might dissuade them both into going back to Colorado, she was ironically saved by damnation.

The telltale ratta-tat-tat of automatic weapons fire erupted overhead, and glass rained down on the concourse between she and her best friends. He instantly crouched, covering his wife in an impenetrable blue aura which made a sharp shrieking sound, almost as if it were alive and screaming primally.

The redhead knew better than to look upwards. All she would find there was a shot-out window. And likewise, she knew better than to look towards the strongest sound of gunfire. That was an echo off the wall nearest her.

Following trained instincts of a once-teenage heroine, she made a beeline for the chaos. She found it easily enough. It was hard to miss; a short rotund man in a classic three piece suit with tails and top hat waving an umbrella around wildly with one hand, as his other clutched a Faberge egg formerly on display in the airport's museum annex.

Okay, easy enough to tell who this was… but, she'd heard that he was supposed to be one of the more shrewd criminals in the gothic city; some kind of organized crime boss, not a whackjob shooting up an airport in a smash-and-grab.

The gingersnap heroine raced towards him just the same. Whatever his motivation was, firing off a machinegun fetish inside a crowded airport as a no-go for her. Hell, it would have been a no-go for her evil lioness, and _she_ generally didn't care about the crossfire.

Raising her right arm, the redhead smacked her hand down on the dial of her oversized watch, launching a grapple from her wrist across the floor. It landed with a thunk in the wall behind the dapper criminal and set tight.

She easily went flying across the tiled distance between them, and rotated mid-flight to bring her killer legs to bare on her target. He would appreciate her attacking like a falcon, talons canted forward, right?

She never got the chance to find out. Something hit her taught grapple line, severing it and sending her careening to the floor when the tension dropped.

Looking up, she saw that what had done the cutting was a highly stylized shuriken, with deeply curved wings on either side, and a dagger-like prong down the center, set with little ears on one side. And it was buried half-way into the tile floor, the very hard industrial tile floor.

The heroine cast green eyes skyward, knowing it had to have come from above to sever her grapple and then embed itself into the floor.

She expected to see a red bird with a green hoody over a cape. She'd been warned that he was territorial, violent, and a perfectionist.

When she saw nothing at all, she frowned. She was good enough that she'd seen the dark people executing their jobs as urban defenders on more than one occasion, no matter how smoothly they operated. She _could_ do anything after all.

Turning, she took a step, intending to close in on the sphenisciforme criminal on foot despite the interruption.

So she was rather shocked that when she locked eyes on him ten seconds later, he was laying on the ground, tied down by an inky black cable.

"What the _heck_?!" Thirty seconds and it was over?

And she hadn't even seen the dark one or his family. She lifted her trademark communicator to her lips and whispered into it, "To Acrobat. Were you just at the airport?"

The advanced multifunction device, still drooling severed grapple cable, converted her words to text and sent them off into the ether.

Walking over to the felled gangster, she examined him. He was indeed trussed tightly despite his struggles. And a second one of those all-black chiropteran-themed stars knotted the coils of rope together.

Arching a ginger brow, she again cast her eyes about. Still no sign of the winged folks. Her communicator buzzed on her wrist. Dark blue text on a black background, "Not me. Not my kid brother or dad either. Why?"

She was about to whisper back her response when there was a solid THUNK at her feet. She leapt back reflexively, fully expecting to find a henchman attacking her. Instead she found a third shuriken, again embedded deeply into the tile, right between where her toes had been, and it was still vibrating faintly.

"Now that was just not cool." She bent down and tugged it free, with some effort.

Across the wings was a message, scrawled in block letters with a white grease pencil, "NOT YOURS."

Archly she cast her eyes around. For the very briefest of moments, she caught a dark blur move into a bank of lockers. With her own precise throw, she flung the chiropteran throwing star at it, and heard it hit home with a solid thunk right where the shadow had vanished.

If someone was sending her a message, she might as well return it, right? Besides, it wasn't like she as going to get fingerprints off of it… they all wore gloves.

"Girl… I knew you needed our help, but I didn't realize I shoulda packed my bullet-proof bra!"

"Dude!" her best friends came running up to her, with her blond in the lead, "Was that one of the nighty knights? Way Cool!"

"Yeah… Cool," she frowned.

She thought she had a clear pass to operate in this city… looked like she needed to seek clarification.

 _ **-DB-DB-DB-DB-DB-**_

She and her best friend ran a quick patrol that afternoon. Having the honest to goodness cheerleading heroine publicly patrolling the old town was starting to get around, and adding in the antics of her partner only spread the word of mouth. The only thing that was missing was their little anthropomorphic pal.

And as such, unlike the city's normal defenders who stalked the night, the redhead and the blond turned up little more than a single mugging that afternoon.

Honestly, she wondered how this city even HAD any crime. She counted no less than four full time vigilantes with seriously fearsome reputations. And that didn't count the part-timers in the dark one's extended "family."

Then again, she reminded herself, criminals were first and foremost a stupid lot. By the time she was nineteen and working as a hero full time they still hadn't learned to simply run when they saw her coming, and she wore a bright purple tunic and a green hair scrunchy.

She had dinner with her besties after their patrol, and shared with her ex's wife where the best upscale shops were in the old city district, close to where she was doing her work-study. She promised to join in, but she had somewhere she needed to be first. Predictably the fashionable woman wanted to tag along and find out, but the redhead told her that if she wanted to know where she was going, she could take it up with her spouse later.

In days gone by, she would have waited a day or two for things to sort themselves out over the sitch. Maybe waited for her antagonist to come to her. Her darker half had broken her of that impulse; mainly because the emerald woman WOULDN'T be the first to come if there was a problem between them, and would force her gingersnap to make the first move in correcting it. And she would wait as long as it took, either because she was lazy, or because she knew it pushed exactly the right buttons to steam her love up.

Their love was born of antagonism after all.

Fortunately, the heroine had an in with this group. She didn't _need_ to figure out where the infamous cavern was, because she knew where the dark one's playboy alter-ego lived, and she had a good excuse to go there.

Several years back, before she had figured out who he was, and confessed to him who she really was, they had teamed up on a public service project. It was a scholarship for young women interested in law enforcement, bearing her name, and backed by his family money.

So it was only proper, six years into the program, that she might check up on its "progress."

Her best male friend was unphased in dropping her off at the front gate of the gothic old manor. After all, they'd spent enough time around the rich and powerful that money was a mere curiosity to them. And as long as he didn't go round suggesting rich people buy spinning tops of doom, they were hakuna.

"And you're sure he's okay with you just showing up?" the blond man leaned out the window of the rental car after letting her out. "I mean… he's so flighty."

"Oh please," She rolled jade eyes and giggled, "A billionaire playboy being visited by a gorgeous redhead half his age on a Friday night?"

"A _lesbian_ redhead," he corrected her, looking innocently at the roof of his car.

"Well, if you get bored without yours for a few hours," she smirked, a touch of her beloved sneaking onto her face, "I know at least one other in town, and she's a billionaire too."

"No way…" he shook his head hard, "I've seen the interviews about her in Human magazine, I mean, come on, they're weapons dealers! Spinning tops of doom?!"

She gave a soft laugh at that. If only he knew what the redhead's part-time job was… "I thought you _liked_ spinning tops of doom?"

"As a concept, not as something that will come after me if I make a bad joke about a lawyer in front of her! She's married to the DA isn't she?!"

Of course he knew who the redheaded industrialist was… he kept up on all the rich people in the western hemisphere because he happened to work for one of the richest ones.

"Not as silly as you look, are you?" She grinned again. It seemed that her darker half was really wanting to be channeled tonight.

Shaking her head, the heroine kissed his cheek and waved him off, and then proceeded to buzz the front gate.

 _ **-DB-DB-DB-DB-DB-**_

"You are going to HAVE to teach me how you do that voice thing," She gushed as she was led through a clock with its hands set to 10:48, "Seriously, I KNOW and even I couldn't tell."

He had so much iron in his hair that she, for just a moment, wondered how he couldn't be tired of this whole… thing. Shaking her head, she moved down the spiral stairs. "It's not as… dark in here as I expected."

He gave her a wry smile, "Well, we do actually have work to do down here, you know. Can't constantly work in the dark, or we'd all have eyestrain and be…"

"If you say blind as bats, I will have to smack you," She smirked a bit, letting her beloved come out through her again.

"You're welcome to try."

"That chin?" She chuckled, "even with the suit I might break my hand. But, as to why I'm here."

"Yes… My daughter." He sighed heavily, "She's always had some… communication problems."

"Wait, you have a daughter?"

"I'm a billionaire socialite, I have several children… Only the one is biological," He nodded as he followed her down the stairs and into the cavern. "Adoption makes it easier to explain why they have access to family funds. And it's not like I didn't raise them, in some ways at least."

As she hit the floor of this particular level of the cavern, she heard the telltale clacking of sticks hitting sticks. Looking over, she saw her favourite acrobat dueling with an eighteen year old guy who had his hair spiked upwards. The acrobat had escrima sticks in his hands, and was spinning and flipping violently around, trying to evade the longer reach of his younger counterpart's quarter-staff.

"You're getting slow in your old age," the younger sneered, whipping around so fast that it seemed to the redhead that his staff actually bent with only the momentum, "It's a wonder _she_ didn't have to save _you_."

The heroine rolled her eyes at that, questioning if he actually knew she was behind him, or if they thought they were having a private discussion. Neither would surprise her.

"When I was your age," She smiled wryly, her dark side slipping away for a moment and her true self returning, "We were taught to respect our elders. Not to talk about them behind their backs."

To his credit, he didn't lose a step as he assaulted his older sibling, "Technically, you're behind my back. And respect is earned, not given blindly."

Rolling her eyes, she pressed the button she knew to press, "Oh, and I'm supposed to tell you hi from Metropolis. And that she's expecting flowers."

It was the minutest of flinches, but it was enough. The acrobatic brother turned the momentum back, and with a flourish, disarmed his sibling of the staff. He gave a grin to his redheaded savior and dropped back. "Seriously kid, we all know… why do you keep hiding it?"

"Oh, take it easy on him," She turned her smile on her coffee-mate, "If there's one thing I know, it's what happens when you're dating someone who is your opposite. You don't want to have to explain it to anyone."

"She's not my opposite, She's… capable," He grit his teeth.

"Oh, that's romantic" she smirked, rolling green eyes… "Never had a guy call _me_ capable."

"The boy doth protest too much, methinks." The acrobat rolled his eyes as he sipped from a bottle of water.

"Hamlet, Act III, Scene II, Queen Gertrude." The younger sibling responded as if by wrote, "as portrayed by the second Quarto, but with an appropriate gender inversion."

"Is he trying to impress me?" She arched a brow at the display.

"No," The acrobat smirked, shaking his head, "His grandfather was a real taskmaster, used to make him recite classic literature while doing things far harder than this. It's more like an ingrained response now."

"Like you hanging around women with red hair," the younger sibling snorted derisively.

"And is he always this abrasive?"

"I'm in the cave, you know,"

"Oh no, he's much better these days… he's even dating."

"And we've come full circle," the eighteen year old snorted again, "I think I'll head out on patrol."

Kim watched him peel off his sweaty clothes and climb into an armor-plated red and green suit with an R on the breast. She had to admit, the blonde girl from metropolis had taste… If he was half as smart as his father and that built at eighteen, no wonder he could keep an alien happy on the sly.

Turning to her, a towel hanging around his chest, the acrobat smiled, "So you met the bird huh?"

For a moment she thought he was referring to his little brother. Then she remembered why she was actually here and who was being discussed. "I don't know if 'met' is the right word for it, but yes, someone flipped me the bird."

He gave a chortle at that and rolled his eyes, "Well, if it makes you feel better, it turns out he wasn't acting of his own volition. We found a calling card."

The heroine looked to the table he indicated and saw a short card, one side was printed circuitry, and the other side was inked lettering, "In This Thyle 10/6?"

"Lewis Carol," the big man deigned again to speak, "Alice through the Looking Glass."

It took her a moment, but she got the reference. "Aaaaah. Huh. Clever, using someone to steal something that everyone thinks they would steal anyways…"

"And once he had stolen it and had the hat band removed," the nightly knight intoned, "He wouldn't remember it or where he'd taken it, and not even a strong telepath would be able to unlock the location."

"Diabolical," the heroine marveled at the plot.

Then she heard the faintest of tap-taps on the wrought iron spiral staircase. She would have paid them less mind, but their very silent nature called her attention to the presence; people who hid their footsteps were often up to no good. After all, it was how she most often met her mate.

She was a bit surprised to find a dark shapely female figure outlined in the lights of the cave, inky from head to toe. Even through dark lenses and a completely concealing mask, the redhead could tell there was an unpleasant expression being directed at her as the form descended. She briefly wondered how the girl could see through those dark lenses at night.

Through seeing her in full light, Kim was a bit frustrated that the symbol on her chest and her utility belt were both a vivid canary yellow. She supposed it was not much different than when her mate had worn a harlequin catsuit with brilliant green panels, though.

It didn't make her feel much better for barely catching sight of her in broad daylight, however.

The elder night-hunter moved to the bottom of the stairs to intercept her. She watched the woman tense even as he approached her, like a kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar. Kim smirked a bit at that in spite of her better self.

The heroine was surprised when they commenced a discussion not in words, but in sign. Her ASL was spotty at best, and it didn't help matters any that they were facing each other instead of her.

All she was really able to gather from the exchange was that both parties were upset, and both occasionally pointed at her during their gesticulations. And those gestures were fast and a bit heated.

Finally the woman, the big man's adoptive daughter, made her way towards the former cheerleader. Her body language read as defeated and disgusted, despite the all-concealing nature of the black and yellow leather.

"I was told to apologize to you."

The words were slightly thick. Not from the covered mouth, the redhead thought, but from something more fundamental. Given that she spoke in sign with the broad-chested patriarch, the heroine estimated it must be congenital.

She spoke up just a bit in case that was the fact, "And will you?"

She heard an irritated snort from the swath of black fabric covering the woman's jaw.

"I'll take that as a no." The purple-themed heroine sighed resignedly. "It's for the best. My partner once told me that we only apologize for two reasons; if we're genuinely sorry for what we've done, or if we want someone off our backs'."

"I am not deaf." The darkling figure snorted again, and Kim could again feel the glare through the opaque lenses.

"Good," the redhead smirked a bit, her darker half again rising to provocation, "Because I'm not on your back and I don't want a fake apology."

She heard a faint creaking, of synthetic leather squeaking as it was tightened. She didn't need to tilt a glance to know it was a clenched fist.

She knew she should be the bigger person. The mature and sophisticated crime fighter she was and a paragon of heroism and forthrightness…

But her mate was not done channeling through her, "Oh, what's the matter, Queen of the night? Upset daddy gave you a talking to?"

Her head snapped to the right an instant before the space it had occupied was filled with a fist. "Mmm? Is someone a bit sore? Get up on the wrong side of the… roost? Is that where bats sleep?"

She deflected another blow with a practiced hand, not yet disturbing her stance. "Seriously? For someone as fast as you were this afternoon, this is pretty weak sauce."

The darker woman dropped back, snorting like an enraged bull. "I was just expressing myself. I am not weak, and I do not lose."

"And I can do anything, Charcoal." The redhead snorted at her masked counterpart. "Tell you what… taking down a chipped wackjob is something my little brothers were doing when they were like… twelve. Take _me_ down? Then I'll start paying attention to your crudely scrawled messages."

"Ah… I'm not sure that's such a good id-," the handsome acrobat raised his hand to object, only to receive a stern glance from his adoptive father. "What? I mean really, she can beat _You_ all things being equal."

"They clearly need to have this out," The elder vigilante cautioned, looking on his daughter and his guest. "Surely you, of all people, know about redheaded tempers?"

The younger detective gave a sideways glance at that, and then threw up his hands.

The aforementioned ginger nodded firmly and struck a stance. But then she eyed her foe's jagged silhouette… "Ahahah… off with those. I came in here in street clothes. And this isn't about saving the world, so I'm not going to willingly operate from a handicap."

The darker-themed woman nodded. With a few clicks, her wickedly barbed gloves came off, clattering to the floor with the heavy thunk of reinforcement. She knelt just long enough to make the same adjustment to the heavy thick-soled boots she wore. Standing before the older crime fighter, robbed of a few inches of height, she made a pointed display of unfastening the canary yellow belt full of gadgetry, holding it out to one side, and letting it drop.

"Anything else? Dirty tricks in the cape? Knife in the small of your back?" smirking, the once-teen heroine eyed her counterpart.

"I should ask you that." Came the vaguely stilted reply from behind the mask.

Looking herself over, the shrugged. After a moment, she disabused herself of her wrist gadget, source of her communications and her grappling hook. "I'm clean. Now, come on batsy betsy, let's dance."

The attack that came at her was like lightning. A long black-clad leg nearly split her head in half as the heroine up-blocked to absorb the impact. An elbow whirled around the point of attack in a ballet-like grace that seemed almost physically impossible.

The redhead folded herself nearly in half to evade it, leaving the dark woman balancing precariously on the toe of one foot with her arms akimbo and her other leg in the air. Much to the chagrin of the woman who could do anything, the batty girl did not topple over gracelessly.

Still, the heroine used the time it took her foe to regain her poise to take the offensive. From her bent position, she cartwheeled forward at the goth, aiming to use the same downward-sweeping kick that had been directed at her.

She managed to lodge a foot in the woman's shoulder, but missed her intended target by a few inches. And that shoulder felt like iron against her heel.

Trying to dislodge the foot proved to be a problem. Her counterpart had angled her head so as to trap the limb, and that grip was like a vice. It didn't seem possible that a neck could be so strong, but she was stuck.

The punishment was swift and brutal. Elbow strikes from the goth's unafflicted arm drove into the redhead's thigh and groin with vicious accuracy, earning pained grunts from the target. Finally a leg sweep from the darkling vigilante dropped the older heroine to the stone floor of the cave with a thud.

Rolling to one side in spite of the complaints from her lap and leg, the woman who could do anything got out of the way of a very graceful curb-stomping. Springing onto her hands, she windmilled her legs and felt one hit home in the dark one's side. It was a light blow, but she'd take it.

"'Every little bit helps' said the old lady as she peed in the sea." she intoned to herself, handspringing quickly away from the wraith with her partner's words of wisdom on her lips.

"Talking to yourself won't help." The gothic vigilante was hot on her heels in a series of somersaults.

"No, but talking to you might," the redhead grinned over her shoulder at the black masked figure. "For instance, the stitching around that mouth? Cliché much or do you just not know how to sew?"

She tried not to sigh to herself when the barb seemed to garner no reaction. She also spun to deflect a blow aimed at her chest from a clenched fist. "Ah, Southern Dragon Style. Good choice."

She countered it with cobra style, flowing around the punch and enveloping the extended arm with her own in a sinuous movement, "I learned that when I was… in fifth grade?"

Her bravado was interrupted when the arm in her grasp moved equally as fluidly, disengaging from her hold and delivering a surprisingly forceful elbow. She grunted, and switched up her style again, converting to a tiger style and looping her elbow with the attacking one, driving her clenched palm into the side of the darkling repeatedly with all the viciousness and force she could muster.

The battle went this way for a few more exchanges. Each time the redhead was attacked, she changed forms again and threw out a new verbal barb, and each time it bought her a few blows. But her attacker was in almost meta-human condition; and despite her immaculate dragon form, was also occasionally mixing in little bits of ninjitsu or jeet kun do.

Trying not to suck wind, the heroine tried rapidly to figure out where her strategy was losing. Then she realized where her mistake was. She was treating this batty girl like any other human; a henchman or a lieutenant or something. But the gothic girl was moving and attacking her with nearly superhuman speed and almost seemed to anticipate her movements if she didn't change it up fast enough.

She was covered in the growing bruises to prove that. She was giving as good as she got, but she was going to run out of her seventeen forms of kung fu sooner rather than later.

So she switched gears entirely. She let her egotistical mate slip away; let go of the taunting, the back biting, and the careful martial attacks. She went back…

Back to her teenage roots. Back to jinking and to flipping and to… cheerleading.

Her hips twisting, she vaulted directly over the head of the darksome woman, putting on a show of agility and flourish. And at the end of it, rather than executing a triumphant Y pose, she dropped low and swept the legs out from under the bat-clad combatant.

She then gave a floor-show caliber tumble, showing off her legs, and rabbit punched the caped girl in the kidneys.

A series of artful and overblown backflips ended with the redhead's legs around the neck of the black cloaked figure and she executed a vicious deathroll, flipping them both through the air. On landing, she cartwheeled around in a circle, almost cheering in true form, and bringing both legs across the cowled face of her antagonist.

She also leaned heavily on her teen experience fighting someone with glowing radioactive fists, allowing blows to slip by her with a few inches to spare rather than trying to counter or block them. Soon she had her counterpart striking nothing but air; and tangling her in her own cape with the over-extended movements.

Just as she thought she had the upper hand, she found that hand around her throat in an iron grip; that peerless dragon-style again sneaking under her guard.

"I never went to normal school," the dark woman was clearly panting through the black mouth of her mask as her voice rolled out, as though she had to consciously choose each word, "So I never encountered a 'cheeeerleader' before. You are… good, not bad."

Her grip tightened and the ginger felt her vision begin to swim as bloodflow to her brain was substantially reduced, "But I do not lose, woman who can do anything."

' _Neither do I!'_ is what she would have liked to retort with, but her brain lacked the oxygen to both say than, and execute a desperate escape gambit. She kicked her feet off the stone floor and grabbed at the arm gripping her neck with both hands, forcing it to take all one hundred twenty two pounds of her weight in an instant.

The death lock on her throat didn't break, but it forced her attacker off her feet, stumbling forward under the sudden imbalance. The heroine wormed around the arm gripping her, and used her whole body as leverage to break the grip.

Panting and landing on all fours, she held up a hand. After a moment, she managed to croak out a response, realizing that even her trustiest skills had been figured out and bested, "Yield!"

The darkling goth held up in her movement to attack the felled redhead.

"Did she just…?"

"Fight your sister to nearly a standstill before being bested? Yes."

"Technically Red and her are closer than we are, but… yeah, wow."

The panting girl finally gave up trying to breathe through sweat-soaked fabric covering her mouth and nose. She reached up, yanking the cowl from her face and inhaling deeply.

The redhead looked across as she cradled her throat. She expected to see some sort of defect in the face of the unmasked goth, given the way she spoke thickly and kept her entire head concealed.

She was surprised.

What she beheld was a striking young woman of Asian descent. With big brown almond-shaped eyes and honey-colored skin. The sweaty tousled black hair only added to the effect of "exotic ninja assassin" that seemed to radiate off of her.

"Stop looking at me like that."

"Like what?" the older heroine croaked out as she finally managed to get to her feet.

"Like you want me." She turned a full glare on the redhead as she wiped out the inside of her cowl.

She was far too old to blush like the schoolgirl she had once been, yet still she rubbed her face as though trying to chase away embarrassment that wasn't really there. "Was I- No, wait! I so was not!"

She turned and looked to the two men in the room for confirmation, but they were both studiously looking anywhere but at her now. She muttered under her breath, "Cowards."

"Wait," she frowned, eyeballing the younger, dark themed woman more archly now, "I couldn't have glanced at you for more than two seconds. How could you even remotely think I was ogling you?"

Once again it sounded like the exotic girl was mentally picking her words and lining them up before releasing them, "I read bodies like you read books."

"…and that's how you knew what I was going to attack with like half the time?" She dodged the question about her wandering eyes easily enough.

"Your body lies well," she spoke a bit more smoothly. She turned her eyes to her adoptive father, "Almost as good as his."

"Lies well?" if it had come from her mate, the heroine would have been sure it was a rather bald faced entendre. But this girl barely used two syllables at once.

"Hiding your movements by switching style… and the… cheerleading?"

She grinned, the teenage girl in her piping up unbidden, "Seventeen forms of Kung Fu, plus cheerleading…"

"That is an impressive number. I wish I had learned to cheerlead then." Again the words were more carefully chosen, as though she was selecting from a list.

[Do you prefer to speak in another language? I'm afraid my sign is more than a little rusty,] the ginger tried her Cantonese out on the younger woman.

It earned her a blank stare. She did her best with her hands to work out her question in the visual language, and this time was met with a flurry of gestures she could barely follow.

"You only speak English and barely that?" she finally deciphered after a repeat performance.

She tried to grasp the concept of someone who could hear and speak normally apparently, but just didn't seem to know the words in even one language. She managed a bit clearer set of gestures, [How about in text? My brothers speak it like a second language.]

[see dick run][run dick run][see spot]

The heroine boggled at that, until her brain made the mental connection. "So you can't really read either. Yet somehow you fight like a war machine. Color me impressed."

"Thank you. You fight go- well. I won't… bother you again." With that, the dark girl turned and walked away from the conversation, apparently done; and peeling off her suit as she went.

The heroine took a moment to admire the body exposed as being nearly as clearly muscled as the costume abs she wore. But she also winced, as her back was covered in various scars, including what looked to be bullet wounds.

"Well that was… abrupt." The once-teen hero blinked confusedly on realizing she was standing alone now, looking tousled and bruised and somewhat like an idiot.

"Yeah, she's like that with pretty much everyone," the acrobat came over, offering what insight he could. "She even punches her best friend… and hard."

"I know the feeling," the redhead grinned a bit to herself.

As the acrobat and the patriarch showed her out, the thirty-something heroine pondered what the fighting savant had said about her eyes. _Had_ she been looking her up and down like that? She had to admit that the girl was definitely beautiful, but... She'd really only ever had one woman she wanted to ogle.

"Hey, Hey!" a honking horn got her attention. She realized she'd been standing there looking at the darkening sky like a twerp.

"Oh!" She shook her head, rubbing her face again, "Sorry, just… lost in thought."

"You look like you were…" he glanced her up and down, "I'd say having an adventure, but you're blushing… did that creep do something to you?"

"Oh for cheese and rice!" she groused, striking an irritated pose, "If the captain of the football team didn't do it for me, do you really think a guy twice my age would? LES-BE-AN… say it with me now… Lesbian…"

Shaking his head at the Mister Rogers moment, he nudged open the door for her, "Seriously. What went on in there? I haven't seen you look like this since your honeymoon."

"I was never married," She huffed, taking a seat and looking out the window as they pulled away. "That was just a vacation."

"You say potato, I say Solanum tuberosum…" he rolled his brown eyes as they got back on the highway.

"Never should have let you take that Latin class Junior year," she rolled her eyes, "Let's just say it was a challenging meeting about young girls' potential for the, ah, scholarship program."

Still, she wondered… that dark batty girl… she was… interesting.

* * *

 _AN: So… Yeah… this story… It's been cooking since shortly after "Light of Day" was published July of 2017 (a year and a half). For a while it was stuck right after the bit where Kim makes fun of Damien. Then I came up with the rather curious idea of Kim and Cass. That, in turn, required a lot of thinking on how to have our redheaded heroine not get simply destroyed by one of the top three bad-asses of the old DC continuum. But we got there in the end! And man how this thing just kept adding to itself every time I edited it._

 _As to these folks, that itself was a bit of a challenge. See, this is almost exclusively based on the DCAU cartoons. And Nightwing only showed up in those once, and Cass and Damien (and by reference Spoiler and Batwoman) never did. So I had to try to balance their tones a bit against who they are in the comics, versus how we reconcile how Bruce ends up all alone by the start of Batman Beyond (which I've tentatively placed around the year 2021 by way of assuming Kim was 18 in 2007 when the show ended and is now 32)._

 _And yeah, this is Classic Cassandra Cain. Not the queen of assassins, not the magically cured dyslexia, not Blackbat, Kasumi, and definitely not Orphan; but the original incarnation, with all her familial issues, her lack of speaking, etc._

 _So there will be one more entry to wrap this story up, again in this same nameless format. After that, there may be a collection of insights/drabbles dealing with the backstory, which, if I do them, won't be in this style._

 _ **Reviews = love**_ _and_ _ **Resharing is caring!**_


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